Irsan S. P. Siregar wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I just installing (and start using) Mandrake 5.3. However, I feel
> that KDE access my HD a lot, and it's slow (compared to Windoze 95).
> Is it normal, or is there a way to speed it up?
>
> My system is:
> - Pentium 133
> - 32 MB RAM
Ah, here's your problem. KDE uses an immense amount of system resources at this
juncture. (I'm sure they'll try to improve this for future versions but...)
I have a P166 with 32MB and it gets slow when using KDE a lot.
The disk activity (called "disk thrashing") is Linux furiously trying to keep up
with the memory demand by paging to disk. (ie. your swap partition). This is
what virtual memory is all about.
However, when you use it a lot...it tends to become slightly faster. I don't
really know why but it seems so to me anyway. My advice is to get more RAM. 64
would be really nice. 128 is better but you'll have to balance your budget with
the need.
You'll find that Linux makes better use of RAM if it has enough of it. For
example, my K6-2 300 with 96MB of RAM runs blazingly fast (even at 1280x1024 at
16bpp) compared to when I was shackled by NT (at 1152x864 at 32bpp). EVERYTHING
is faster. Even Comm.4.08 (amazingly enough)
> - Quantum Fireball 6.4 GB (Linux Native and Swap are here)
> - Conner CFS850A (slave, not mounted in Linux)
> I use the command
> hdparm -t -T /dev/hda
> to check for HD performance. I forgot the result, but it's quite
> fast.
Yup...your hdd is fine. That's not the problem. If you do not want to get more
RAM...then perhaps you might consider using a slimmer desktop and wm like fvwm95
or something.
>
> BTW, is there a utility similar to MCLK (DOS utility to overclock
> graphic card) for Linux? I run KDE with 1024 x 768 x 16bpp with
> S3 ViRGE, and in its default clock speed, it's slow.
You don't need a utility. You just edit the X config file. (be VERY careful when
doing this, however, you can easily fry your monitor.)
Hope this helps.
--
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Kuraiken - Apprentice Codecaster
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